quotations about conservatives
I do not know which makes a man more conservative -- to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES
The End of Laissez-Faire
The technical term for conservatives who are not afraid of liberals is: "unpublished."
ANN COULTER
How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must)
The perils of change are so great, the promise of the most hopeful theories is so often deceptive, that it is frequently the wiser part to uphold the existing state of things, if it can be done, even though, in point of argument, it should be utterly indefensible.
ROBERT GASCOYNE-CECIL
The Quartely Review, 1865
Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good.
DANIEL P. MOYNIHAN
New York Post, May 14, 1969
The Republican establishment has decided they don't want any part of conservatism, and this is really not new. People are surprised to hear this. But the republican party formative event of conservativism is Goldwater's landslide defeat. That's what they think of when they think "conservative". They don't think Reagan. They think Goldwater. They believe what the inside-the-Beltway philosophy is about conservatives: they're racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, Southern hayseed hicks. They're pro-lifers, they're embarrassing to have to go to convention with them, and they're just embarrassed to have those kind of people in the party.
RUSH LIMBAUGH
On the Record w/ Greta Van Susteren, December 15, 2011
Isn't conservatism in part about resisting so-called new realities when you sense they might be questionable, even as people lecture you that you've got to get with the times?
BILL KRISTOL
"Still a Republican", The Weekly Standard, March 23, 2018
To a right-winger, unions are awful. Why do right-wingers hate unions? Because collective bargaining is the power that a worker has against the corporation. Right-wingers hate that.
JANEANE GAROFALO
Majority Report, Jun. 3, 2005
The conservative response to modernity is to embrace it, but to embrace it critically, in full consciousness that human achievements are rare and precarious, that we have no God-given right to destroy our inheritance, but must always patiently submit to the voice of order, and set an example of orderly living.
ROGER SCRUTON
"Eliot and Conservatism", A Political Philosophy
Conservatives do not believe that political struggle is the most important thing in life... The simplest among them prefer fox-hunting--the wisest religion.
QUINTIN HOGG
The Case for Conservatism
The conservative is a person who considers very closely every chance, even the longest, of "throwing out the baby with the bath-water," as the German proverb puts it, and who determines his conduct accordingly.
ALBERT JAY NOCK
The Atlantic Monthly, October 1936
The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas -- uncertainty, progress, change -- into crimes.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
speech, Feb. 6, 1990
Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues; tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism.
WALTER LIPPMANN
A Preface to Politics
Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.
KINGSLEY AMIS
Sunday Telegraph, Jul. 2, 1967
Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic and power adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place.
FRIEDRICH HAYEK
The Road to Serfdom
A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits.
WOODROW WILSON
attributed, Democrats and Republicans: Rhetoric and Reality
A conservative is someone who does not think he is morally superior to his grandfather.
JOHN HOWARD
The Howard Era
Conservatism can only win in the short term, because society cannot stop evolving.
CHUCK KLOSTERMAN
I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains
To be conservative requires no brains whatsoever. Cabbages, cows and conifers are conservatives, and are so stupid they don’t even know it. All that is basically required is acceptance of what exists.
COLIN WELCH
London Spectator, Jul. 21, 1967
The only difference today between Liberals and Conservatives is that the Liberals go to mass at five o' clock and the Conservatives at eight.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.
MARK TWAIN
attributed, Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist